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Telecommunications

Telecommunications, Internet, & Media

The telecommunications industry is a complex, evolving industry with rapid technological innovation and ever-changing regulatory and business environments. CRA’s economic and business consultants provide expert guidance to our clients to navigate any business, litigation, and regulatory challenges they face. We support our clients in matters related to business disputes; class actions; breach of contract, including intercarrier compensation issues; regulatory challenges, including pricing analysis; competition analysis and deregulation; economic cost analysis; intellectual property infringement; and complex antitrust matters and merger review.

Our clients include both large and small telecommunications carriers, internet service providers, television broadcasters and networks, cable operators and program services, manufacturers of network equipment, manufacturers of handsets and other consumer premise equipment, and regulatory agencies at all levels. Our clients are both domestic and international.

Communications Regulation

Opening of markets to competition

Regulation of new and legacy services

Determination of telecommunications costs

Rate-setting

Merger analysis

CRA experts provide reports and testimony to state regulatory agencies, the Federal Communications Commission, other federal and international regulatory agencies, and legislatures on matters including the effects of proposed rulemakings on competition, market definition and analysis, prices, costs, consumer welfare, innovation, and rate setting. CRA experts have extensive experience analyzing mergers in the communications space.

TCPA

Class Certification

Availability of Personally Identifiable Information

CRA experts assist clients involved in TCPA litigation. Our consultants provide, among other services, analysis of complex databases including call detail records, numbering administrator records, and “do not call” databases. Our experts also analyze third-party databases and carrier records for reliability and completeness in the context of class certification. CRA also assists clients in assessing their exposure to TCPA liability.

5G and Public Policy

CRA maintains active, ongoing expertise related to emerging wireless technologies, including 5G. CRA’s experts monitor and analyze the state of competition in 5G network equipment markets, spectrum requirements for 5G and relevant spectrum availability in various countries, key technology innovations in 5G, the state of 5G deployments worldwide, and the economic effects of public policies that may accelerate or retard deployment of 5G infrastructure.

Sample engagements

Allegations of exclusionary behavior under Sections I and II of the Sherman ActCRA was retained by defendants in a matter involving allegations of exclusionary behavior, refusal to deal, and essential facilities regarding telephone numbering resources. CRA’s expert analyzed Plaintiff’s expert’s proposed market definition, performed analysis of alleged harm to competition, and provided jury trial testimony.

Regulatory treatment of rural telephone companiesCRA was retained by several rural telephone companies in a disputed proceeding to consider a change in regulatory policy governing how rural carriers are funded to meet state broadband universal service obligations. CRA’s expert analyzed the anticipated economic effect of the proposed policy on prices, market structure, costs to taxpayers, efficiency, and social welfare and provided testimony before the relevant state public utilities commission.

Allegations of theft of trade secrets and copyright infringementCRA’s expert was retained by defendant to analyze unjust enrichment claims in an intellectual property dispute related to wireless handset technology. CRA’s expert applied expertise in the telecommunications industry, as well as economic expertise, to analyze the claimed unjust enrichment damages and provide jury trial testimony.

TCPA class certificationCRA’s expert was retained to assess whether members of a purported class could be reliably identified from only a list of wireless phone numbers dialed on various dates in the past, and to apply data analytic techniques to assess whether customer responses are a reliable means of identifying which calls, among millions of calls, were made to wrong numbers. CRA’s expert applied sophisticated text matching techniques to compare third-party databases of time-delimited name-and-number registries to assess their error rates with respect to the potential class members. CRA’s expert also matched incoming calls with outgoing called numbers, finding that purported wrong numbers were frequently not in fact wrong numbers for the accused calls.

CRA experts were engaged to provide liability and damages testimony in a case alleging wireless carriers fixed the prices of pay-per-use text messages. Our experts provided economic analysis that established that the carriers’ decisions regarding prices for pay-per-use text messaging were consistent with unilateral profit maximization and not collusion.

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